LTA defends its decision

The Land Transport Authority says the decision to use electricity and water bills for renewal of licences and other transactions was done to improve customer service.

CEO Naisa Tuinaceva made the comment in response to queries from the Consumer Council of Fiji and other individuals calling for the LTA to reconsider the requirements made public two days ago.

"This approach is done to improve on our customer service as we deal with thousands of data," he said.

"In doing this exercise, we get our customers to bring their bills so we will be notified of their addresses.

"Basically if their bills are not provided, then we may resort to options like TIN letters to process certain transactions."

Consumer Council CEO Premila Kumar said electricity and water bills were normally under one person's name.

"The council finds this notice to be absurd as it does not clearly state what happens to a family where more than one member owns a vehicle but does not have a separate water and electricity meter under their name," Mrs Kumar said.

"There are many vehicle owners across the country that do not have a meter for either water or electricity or both.

"Therefore, the council is urging LTA to reconsider its requirements which is not making sense and will cause a lot of inconvenience to vehicle owners and licence holders."

Mrs Kumar said if the intention was to get the correct physical and postal address of the vehicle owners, LTA should consider using voter registration cards or other valid identification to confirm the owners' physical and postal addresses.

Former Fiji Taxi Association general secretary Rishi Ram said the LTA had failed to do its homework by not realising that all its customers were not the owners of a premise.

"Hence most of them are renting and have been using others' postal address," Mr Ram said.

"Secondly most present owners are still utilising their late parents and their forefathers old billing system and this is still not on their name," he added